Abstract
There has been much speculation as to the type of calendar that was used by the pre-Islamic Arabs and the early Muslim community. The Hijrī calendar is said to have been adopted by ‘Umar b. al-Khaṭṭāb during his Caliphate despite evidence suggesting that it was instituted as soon as the Prophet emigrated to Madīnah. In this paper, we argue that a number of competing Arabian calendars existed up until 17 AH/AD 638, after which the Hijrī calendar was adopted as the definitive calendar of the Muslims. We propose that attempts at reconciling dates emanating from different calendars for major events in the Prophet’s life led to miscalculations which subsequently affected the chronology of the sīrah. This study ultimately argues that a purely lunar calendar was used by the pre-Islamic Arabs in parallel to a lunisolar calendar, and that specific dates reported in the covenants of the Prophet and in the historical works could shed new light in reconstructing the chronology of major events in the Prophet’s life.
Highlights
Al-Bırūnı’s (d. 440 AH/1048 CE) Kitāb al-Āthār al-Bāqiyah ‘an al-Qurūn al-Khāliyah is perhaps the first major book by a Muslim scholar to conduct an in-depth study of the various calendars
Arabs could not possibly have maintained any concise record of events, because “the calendar loses its value for these men constantly living in the immutable desert.”3 Other than pointing out discrepancies in the Muslim literature concerning the age of the Prophet, his death, and the periods which he spent in Makkah and Madınah, Lammens’ study hardly sheds any light on the pre-Islamic calendar
We further argue that this lunar calendar was used in conjunction with a lunisolar calendar which was adopted from the Jewish calendar as ‘Alıand Ioh have proposed
Summary
Al-Bırūnı’s (d. 440 AH/1048 CE) Kitāb al-Āthār al-Bāqiyah ‘an al-Qurūn al-Khāliyah is perhaps the first major book by a Muslim scholar to conduct an in-depth study of the various calendars. Arabs could not possibly have maintained any concise record of events, because “the calendar loses its value for these men constantly living in the immutable desert.” Other than pointing out discrepancies in the Muslim literature concerning the age of the Prophet, his death, and the periods which he spent in Makkah and Madınah, Lammens’ study hardly sheds any light on the pre-Islamic calendar. Shamsi wrote a number of articles in the journal Islamic Studies in which he provided his own insights on the pre-Islamic calendar, the date of the Hijrah, and the meaning of the nası’ in Q9:37. Perceval’s reconstruction of the pre-Islamic calendar; the possibility of a strictly lunar calendar having been observed in Makkah before the Hijrah as proposed by Effendi; and the relationship between the Islamic and Jewish calendars that was advanced by ‘Alı. Verification’, an examination of Sunni and Shı‘a historical works, and an analysis of new sources which have become available such as the covenants of the Prophet, archaeological evidence, and various non-Muslim testimonies
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